The New America: Elite Privates forever out of reach for UMC?

[Anonymous]

The making $3k over the summer toward $8k tuition is what gets me because wage stagnation is the other piece here. Yes, tuition has gone up like crazy - my tuition at a SLAC in the mid-2000s was $40k and my college charges close to $70k 15 years later, which is wild. But i also worked during the summers and was only able to earn a little over $3k. In my small town there just weren't jobs available for unskilled workers like a college freshman that paid more. My mom took a semester off from college in the 70s to earn enough to pay for an entire year when her mom remarried and she lost financial aid; no way could a 20 year old student earn enough in 7 months to do that now.

It sounds like you're conflating COA with tuition? I don't think any SLAC charges $70k, but plenty were 40k in tuition in the mid 2000s.

I am referring to COA. Tuition, room, and board.

This is true, my kids working their butts off over the summer are able to make hardly more than I did as a teen 30 years ago. There aren't as many flexible jobs willing to hire seasonally and minimum wage has not kept up with regular inflation let alone higher ed cost.

DP: True. In 1988, the United States minimum wage was $3.35, equivalent to $7.29 in 2019 dollars. The current MD youth minimum wage for 90 days of employment (summer job rate), is $4.25. Kids literally cannot earn as much to contribute today for a much higher education cost as we were were able to back then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Not PP, but a substantial number of my HS friends, in the mixed-SES town I grew up, in attended top-20 schools: Harvard, Yale, Brown, Williams, Amherst, Dartmouth - those are the names I recall off the top of my head.

In our generation (I'm 58yo), the cost of attendance could be covered from savings, current income, the student's summer earnings, work study, and some modest loans. E.g. the expensive private SLAC I attended cost about $8,000 when I started in 1979, and I contributed about 25% of that from my summer and school-year work. Proportionally, a student today would have to contribute almost $25,000 to make the same dent in the same school's costs.

Adjusted for inflation, $8,000.00 in 1979 is equal to $29,687.80 in 2019. But that school now costs almost $75,000/year.

+1

I'm 59 and this describes the shift well.

It's really about who gets access to the elite institutions and therefore into the ruling class.

I don’t think an elite private cost $8000 in 1979. I went to school that year and it was more. Not able to subsidize that with a summer job unless it was engineering/ computers.
Also we are paying $43k for a State school. Education has always been geared towards the wealthy. Even if it’s not proportional right now. There are so many more wealthy people full pay now at elite schools.

Yale University cost $8,140 for tuition, room, and board in 1979.

https://yalealumnimagazine.com/articles/4074-the-cost-of-yale-a-history

Harvard U.'s COA rose to $9,000 that year:

https://www.nytimes.com/1979/12/17/archives/harvard-education-cost-rising-to-9000-a-year.html

See also:

https://www.nytimes.com/1979/05/21/archives/costs-at-some-universities-will-rise-above-9000-this-year-survey.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes. Look at the liberal elites. They have gotten their prize and their high position on the economic ladder. They have now shut the door and pulled up the ladder to the opportunities that got them to where they are today for the upper middle class. By allowing UMC access to education at prestigious private schools they could potentially be knocked a few runs lower on the ladder. The liberal elite are all for admitting poor minority students because they won't pose a threat to them once they graduate.

You mean the liberal elites that vote for increased student aid and student loan debt relief, only to have those policies gutted when a Republican gets in office? Those liberal elites?

You are either enormously stupid or really bad at trolling.

I am talking about the liberal elites who have increased elite private education to over $70,000/year.
You're mind is clouded that the liberal elites are actually good people trying to raise others up. THey are not.

The liberal elite are protectionists.
Just look at how impossible it is to build low income housing in San Francisco and Seattle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Not PP, but a substantial number of my HS friends, in the mixed-SES town I grew up, in attended top-20 schools: Harvard, Yale, Brown, Williams, Amherst, Dartmouth - those are the names I recall off the top of my head.

In our generation (I'm 58yo), the cost of attendance could be covered from savings, current income, the student's summer earnings, work study, and some modest loans. E.g. the expensive private SLAC I attended cost about $8,000 when I started in 1979, and I contributed about 25% of that from my summer and school-year work. Proportionally, a student today would have to contribute almost $25,000 to make the same dent in the same school's costs.

Adjusted for inflation, $8,000.00 in 1979 is equal to $29,687.80 in 2019. But that school now costs almost $75,000/year.

+1

I'm 59 and this describes the shift well.

It's really about who gets access to the elite institutions and therefore into the ruling class.

I don’t think an elite private cost $8000 in 1979. I went to school that year and it was more. Not able to subsidize that with a summer job unless it was engineering/ computers.
Also we are paying $43k for a State school. Education has always been geared towards the wealthy. Even if it’s not proportional right now. There are so many more wealthy people full pay now at elite schools.

Yale University cost $8,140 for tuition, room, and board in 1979.

https://yalealumnimagazine.com/articles/4074-the-cost-of-yale-a-history

Harvard U.'s COA rose to $9,000 that year:

https://www.nytimes.com/1979/12/17/archives/harvard-education-cost-rising-to-9000-a-year.html

See also:

https://www.nytimes.com/1979/05/21/archives/costs-at-some-universities-will-rise-above-9000-this-year-survey.html

May 1979:

"Universities with costs expected to be over $8,500 are Brown ($8,915), Princeton ($8,760), Massachusetts Institute of Technology ($8,760), Stanford ($8,749), Columbia College ($8,600), the University of Pennsylvania ($8,600) and Dartmouth College ($8,546).

Among public universities, those with the highest tuitions were Temple University in Philadelphia ($1,610 and possibly higher), the University of Pittsburgh ($1,510 and possibly higher), the University of Vermont ($1,500), the University of Michigan ($1,150), the University of New Hampshire ($1,150) and the University of Minnesota ($1,125)."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Not PP, but a substantial number of my HS friends, in the mixed-SES town I grew up, in attended top-20 schools: Harvard, Yale, Brown, Williams, Amherst, Dartmouth - those are the names I recall off the top of my head.

In our generation (I'm 58yo), the cost of attendance could be covered from savings, current income, the student's summer earnings, work study, and some modest loans. E.g. the expensive private SLAC I attended cost about $8,000 when I started in 1979, and I contributed about 25% of that from my summer and school-year work. Proportionally, a student today would have to contribute almost $25,000 to make the same dent in the same school's costs.

Adjusted for inflation, $8,000.00 in 1979 is equal to $29,687.80 in 2019. But that school now costs almost $75,000/year.

+1

I'm 59 and this describes the shift well.

It's really about who gets access to the elite institutions and therefore into the ruling class.

Actually, I bet most of the former graduates of these schools are in the UMC anyway, not the "ruling class".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes. Look at the liberal elites. They have gotten their prize and their high position on the economic ladder. They have now shut the door and pulled up the ladder to the opportunities that got them to where they are today for the upper middle class. By allowing UMC access to education at prestigious private schools they could potentially be knocked a few runs lower on the ladder. The liberal elite are all for admitting poor minority students because they won't pose a threat to them once they graduate.

You mean the liberal elites that vote for increased student aid and student loan debt relief, only to have those policies gutted when a Republican gets in office? Those liberal elites?

You are either enormously stupid or really bad at trolling.

I am talking about the liberal elites who have increased elite private education to over $70,000/year.
You're mind is clouded that the liberal elites are actually good people trying to raise others up. THey are not.

I think the conservative elites are worse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:100k gets fin aid at Harvard what are you talking about

+1 the threshold is even higher at Stanford. If you’re complaining that you haven’t saved up enough despite having an income higher than 95% of Americans, I will play you the world’s smallest violin.

[Anonymous]

The problem with those calculators is they tend to assume that whatever your current HHI is (or last three years), that you've had it for the last 20 or whatever. I stayed home for a while when the kids were young, then worked for a nonprofit, then adjuncted for awhile and got a job in educational administration when my kids were in high school! There was nothing to stash away during the lean years, but the calculators all assume that you have had the same income for your whole adult working life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

The OP is simply arguing for a redefinition of “poor”.

Yes. And no. Not arguing that one can't get a wonderful education at a lesser private (with merit aid) or a public. Elites are different in status and theoretically offer entrance into the ruling class. In the post WWII period they were open to this demographic. Had many high school friends at IVY's and Stanford. None of their families could be described as rich, just reasonably comfortable.

What I am describing is a structural shift in American higher education which seems at this point to be permanent.

Yes. This is real and a big deal. Several middle class kids at my not-so-remarkable public high school went to Ivys. Granted that they were of course the academic high achievers at our school, I don't think that happens as much any more. It is an important development and people should not roll their eyes about people feeling "entitled" to the Ivys or anything. The Ivys are the gateway to a certain type of elite in this country and the fact that middle class kids don't have an on-ramp to it is part of what is going to give us an increasingly insular, removed and aristocratic elite class, which is bad for the country as a whole.

Two immediate contributors here are that the Ivys hold down their class sizes and take kids from all over the world; they now aim to be a global Davos training school and not just an American one. That doesn't leave much room for "ordinary" American high achievers.

The best solution to this would be trying to open up the elite, not open up the Ivys -- we need to open up opportunity way beyond the .1% and their Ivy degrees. Affirmative action for state school graduates!

FYI there has not been a president without an Ivy degree since Ronald Reagan. It didn't used to be that way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The OP is simply arguing for a redefinition of “poor”.

Yes. And no. Not arguing that one can't get a wonderful education at a lesser private (with merit aid) or a public. Elites are different in status and theoretically offer entrance into the ruling class. In the post WWII period they were open to this demographic. Had many high school friends at IVY's and Stanford. None of their families could be described as rich, just reasonably comfortable.

What I am describing is a structural shift in American higher education which seems at this point to be permanent.

Yes. This is real and a big deal. Several middle class kids at my not-so-remarkable public high school went to Ivys. Granted that they were of course the academic high achievers at our school, I don't think that happens as much any more. It is an important development and people should not roll their eyes about people feeling "entitled" to the Ivys or anything. The Ivys are the gateway to a certain type of elite in this country and the fact that middle class kids don't have an on-ramp to it is part of what is going to give us an increasingly insular, removed and aristocratic elite class, which is bad for the country as a whole.

Two immediate contributors here are that the Ivys hold down their class sizes and take kids from all over the world; they now aim to be a global Davos training school and not just an American one. That doesn't leave much room for "ordinary" American high achievers.

The best solution to this would be trying to open up the elite, not open up the Ivys -- we need to open up opportunity way beyond the .1% and their Ivy degrees. Affirmative action for state school graduates!

FYI there has not been a president without an Ivy degree since Ronald Reagan. It didn't used to be that way.

They’re really not, and if you’re not part of the elite already an Ivy isn’t going to help you get there. Or at least, that’s what the research says.

Re: your last paragraph. You just have no idea, do you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The OP is simply arguing for a redefinition of “poor”.

Yes. And no. Not arguing that one can't get a wonderful education at a lesser private (with merit aid) or a public. Elites are different in status and theoretically offer entrance into the ruling class. In the post WWII period they were open to this demographic. Had many high school friends at IVY's and Stanford. None of their families could be described as rich, just reasonably comfortable.

What I am describing is a structural shift in American higher education which seems at this point to be permanent.

Did you really have "many" high school friends at those nine schools?

Not PP, but a substantial number of my HS friends, in the mixed-SES town I grew up, in attended top-20 schools: Harvard, Yale, Brown, Williams, Amherst, Dartmouth - those are the names I recall off the top of my head.

In our generation (I'm 58yo), the cost of attendance could be covered from savings, current income, the student's summer earnings, work study, and some modest loans. E.g. the expensive private SLAC I attended cost about $8,000 when I started in 1979, and I contributed about 25% of that from my summer and school-year work. Proportionally, a student today would have to contribute almost $25,000 to make the same dent in the same school's costs.

Yes. Saw the same.
Adjusted for inflation, $8,000.00 in 1979 is equal to $29,687.80 in 2019. But that school now costs almost $75,000/year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:100k gets fin aid at Harvard what are you talking about

+1 the threshold is even higher at Stanford. If you’re complaining that you haven’t saved up enough despite having an income higher than 95% of Americans, I will play you the world’s smallest violin.

Most people aren’t going to Harvard to Stanford. Harvard’s financial aid affects so few people, but is constantly brought up as an example of an equal playing field. Even graduating from a state university debt -free these days is an advantage few have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes. Look at the liberal elites. They have gotten their prize and their high position on the economic ladder. They have now shut the door and pulled up the ladder to the opportunities that got them to where they are today for the upper middle class. By allowing UMC access to education at prestigious private schools they could potentially be knocked a few runs lower on the ladder. The liberal elite are all for admitting poor minority students because they won't pose a threat to them once they graduate.

You mean the liberal elites that vote for increased student aid and student loan debt relief, only to have those policies gutted when a Republican gets in office? Those liberal elites?

You are either enormously stupid or really bad at trolling.

I am talking about the liberal elites who have increased elite private education to over $70,000/year.
You're mind is clouded that the liberal elites are actually good people trying to raise others up. THey are not.

I think the conservative elites are worse.

There is no such thing as a conservative elite in this country. Even the supposed Republicans are liberals.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Apparently, places like Harvard only want super rich kids or kids from modest families, and nothing in between. $200k hhi with multiple kids cannot afford their tuition. Well, I suppose we could if we basically cash out our retirement and live hand to mouth from now till we die.

This is enormously stupid. First, this discussion is about price, not admissions. Second, you have *something* saved for college, right? You weren't planning on cash-flowing the entire thing? Well, that will cover a portion of the tuition. You, or your children, can take out loans to cover the rest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:100k gets fin aid at Harvard what are you talking about

+1 the threshold is even higher at Stanford. If you’re complaining that you haven’t saved up enough despite having an income higher than 95% of Americans, I will play you the world’s smallest violin.

Most people aren’t going to Harvard to Stanford. Harvard’s financial aid affects so few people, but is constantly brought up as an example of an equal playing field. Even graduating from a state university debt -free these days is an advantage few have.

Know how I know you didn't read the title of the thread?